Thailand - Chang Mai - Day 7

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Well, I have been to and left Kanchanaburi... it was a pretty little town, most things within walking distance.

Let's see... We stayed at Apple's Guesthouse in Kanchanaburi, a pretty little guesthouse with woven grass walls, and VERY interesting toilets - no flush, but a system where you scoop water out of a tub and pour it into the toilet. Our first day in Kanchanaburi our beds weren't ready, so we went out on our first tour - out on a longtail boat across the river and to a few places that were significant because of the war and the Thai-Burma railway. First up we went to the JEATH war museam... the Jeath war museum is a collection of weapons, maps, photos, drawings, paintings etc to do with World War II, and particularly with the building of the Thai-Burma railway, which the Japanese army forced Allied prisoners of war to build in a hurry with little food, little medicine, horrible torture, and awful living conditions. From there, went went to Chungkai War Cemetery, where approximately 1650 Allied soldiers are buried as a result of the railway - a significant number of these are unknown graves marked with the saying "A soldier of the 1939-1945 war, Known unto God". From the cemetery, we went to the Bridge over the River Kwai - yep, from the movie. We pulled up in the boat underneath it, most of us dying for a cold drink, then watched a young girl (11) and a young boy (4) cutting sugar can which they gave to us for a price to feed their pet elephant. Yep pet elephant. The little boy was stripping off the sugar cane - at one point he got too close to the elephant and it tried to grab, the boy screamed and ran off - not crying, but very cute to watch. From there, we headed up and walked across the bridge - they still have a tourist train running across it, so every so often we had to duck for cover to avoid being run over. Poi, our tourguide, knows heaps of history about the area and speaks excellent English - there's no question she can't answer.

From the Bridge, we headed back to our hotels for showers and then out to dinner at the hotel restaurant - the food there is meant to be legendary, and it was very good. From there, we headed across to a bar full of interesting characters - the bartender with his Jamaican rastafarian hat, the drunken guy from Leeds who spent the whole time trying to hit on Emma, his Thai tattooed girlfriend who wanted to machete Emma, and the host, who brought out Jenga for us to play over our Singha beers.

The next day, still in Kanchanaburi, we went out to some more War memorial type stuff - firstly to the Hellfire Pass Memorial Museum, which explained further about the Thai-Burma railway and WWII. Some interesting stuff in that museum - there were Allied soldiers and 200,000 Asian laborours recruited to work on the railway, and the Allied soldiers tried to sabotage the railway in crafty ways, by putting termites nests near wooden structures, and not filling holes in properly but making them look as though they were. Some of the more moving stuff I saw in that museum were personal artefacts - the trail of letters from George, whose family received a multiple choice postcard from him saying he was well, a letter saying he was a POW, and a death notice, and a certificate, and the diary that was there that you could read a bit of behind the glass. Outside from the museum, there was a peace memorial overlooking a beautiful view of the green mountains.

From the Memorial museum, we walked down to Hellfire Pass - this is a section of the railway that was the toughest to build. Instead of building up and over the natural lie of the mountains, the soldiers had to drill and cut through solid rock - tonnes and tonnes of it to lie the railway. This section was the Konyu Cutting or Hellfire Pass, and it was dotted along the way with the sleepers of the railway, poppies from others that have walked through, and scars on the rockface from the drills. There's even a broken off drill stuck in the rock.

Our next stop was Erawen National Park for a swim in the seven tiered waterfall. We were all gross and hot and sweaty by then and dying for some refreshment - getting changed so sticky in a tiny little toilet cubicle was not an experience I want to repeat any time soon. Headed down to the 2nd floor of the waterfall, and some of the guys were under the waterfall in a cave that was there. Meagan and I inched across it, Meagan nearly killed herself diving in and falling off the log. I ended up not going in - as soon as I put my leg in to get in, fish started nibbling at me, and I did NOT like that one bit. So I sat on the log and just used my hands to douse cold water over me - it was VERY lovely 😊

We then walked up to see some other tiers of the waterfall - as we were walking up to the third tier, it started pissing down with rain, and this made us all actually quite cold. At the fourth tier, there are two flat rocks to slide down, so we spent some time doing that before heading back to the Guesthouse.

That night we went out to party on the river - a floating raft down the River Kwai listing to disco music and dancing the night away. Much fun was had, although I felt a bit ill - I have come down with Jody's cold and have zero energy to be doing much at all.

The next day we headed off to Ayuthaya - we got on our first bus at quarter to 9, we got off our second bus at quarter to 1 - lovely fan-cooled buses where we stuck to the vinyl seats. Yuck. We were not in Ayuthaya for long - we checked into a hotel just to change clothes and then we headed out on bicycles to see some temples - Wat Marthal (?) or something similar to that, which is a huge huge HUGE temple that is now in ruins because the Burmese army burnt it and cut off the heads of the Buddhas when they had a war with Thailand. The key feature of this temple was the Buddha head that was caught in roots of a tree, and is still there, being supported by the tree roots. It was quite pretty, but we spent so long there we ran out of time to see the other temples, so we just rode past them. We saw some Thais riding elephants down the street. The bike ride itself was an interesting experience - there are zero road rules here, lines on the road mean nothing, there are no speed limits, and (Mum stop reading) we had no helmets. Crazy, and it's been forever since I rode a bike also!

After our ride, we showered and went to have some food before heading to the train station for an overnight sleeper train to Chiang Mai, which is where I am now. We just got here a couple of hours ago, and have had showers after our night in the sleeper train (also an interesting experience!) and to have lunch. We are going for a trip to a temple at 3 - an hour long ride to get there, 300 steps to climb up it, and there will be monks chanting apparantly. We are off on our hilltribe trek tomorrow - should be an interesting experience, trekking for four hours through the jungle, then riding elephants and bamboo rafts out of it the following day!

Bye for now, will sorry this is a mini-essay!

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Comments

[Sherwells]

Gday
Howdy... your mum just wants to let you know that she is reading your journals. and so am i... and so is brenton but he wont admit it. Love you lots